I start with the idea of constructing a treehouse and end with a skyscraper made of wood. – Norman Mailer
Any workout which does not involve a certain minimum of danger or responsibility does not improve the body – it just wears it out. – Norman Mailer
With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance. – Norman Mailer
Psychoanalysis and Zen, in my private psychic geometry, are equal to nicotine. They are anti-existential. Nicotine quarantines one out of existence. – Norman Mailer
I really would like to stop working forever—never work again, never do anything like the kind of work I’m doing now—and do nothing but write poetry and have leisure to spend the day outdoors and go to museums and see friends…. Just a literary and quiet city-hermit existence. – Allen Ginsberg
The majority of writers ought to translate themselves; there are but few thoughts that are born translated, that is, clothed with the power best fitted alike to express and transmit them. What we have in the first instance written for ourselves, should be written a second time for others. – Alexandre Vinet (1797–1847), Literature. First Section: Literature in Gene